Robert Berring in the news:

“Attorney General (Eric) Holder has stated that so long as medical marijuana dispensaries do not violate state laws they will let them alone,” Berring said in an email. “Even the federal judge who has allowed them to keep operating while the case proceeds asked why the government was pursuing this matter. It beats me.”

“What an honor to be dissed by Justice Scalia,” said professor Robert Berring Jr., who teaches the Berkeley course. “This seminar is devoted to reading the great legal thinkers, from Holmes, Cardozo and Llewellyn all the way to Cover, Bork, Posner and Schauer with many in between. The students do lots of reading and write a serious paper.” Last year, Berring added, “We even read Scalia!”

Bob Berring profiled in China Daily, January 31, 2014
“The Chinese view of history, grounded in a polity that had endured for millennia, fascinated me. What perspective could the American experience bring when the nation had not even lasted as long as a single Chinese dynasty?”

Edley redefined Boalt’s financial model and raised “unheard of” amounts of money, according to former Berkeley Law dean and current professor Jesse Choper. He also expanded the faculty and modernized the school’s facilities. “Transformative is one of those overused, trendy words, but that’s what his work was — transformative,” Choper said.

“He came from high-level politics and brought incredible energy and vision,” said Berkeley Law professor Robert Berring.

Berring noted that there is no reason the US and China cannot cooperate in the future. “Rationally, there is no necessary conflict of interest. It is a challenge for the leadership of the US to recognize China as a peer, a nation that must be dealt with as an equal,” he said.

“Economic reform is difficult. Taking on corruption even more so. The Party and the State must follow his (Li’s) words and seek social equity and balance,” said Robert Berring, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who teaches courses on the Chinese legal system.

Robert Berring, a professor with the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, said China’s leadership is saying all the right things. “China will stay on the right track if these goals are ardently pursued,” Berring said. “China has matured into a world economic colossus. Now it is time to make sure that the colossus has a strong foundation.”

Lauren Edelman and Robert Berring quoted in Yale Daily News, September 13, 2012

“The point that Robert Post makes about the possibility of there being a study of law that is independent of other disciplines, I think, is a hard point to make,” said Lauren Edelman…. “It’s somewhat unclear to me what it means to say that [the new Ph.D.] is wholly about law, given that law itself is a field very much populated by Ph.D.s in other disciplines, and much of the legal scholarship takes into account many of the fundamentals and methods represented.”

Bob Berring, a former interim dean of Berkeley Law, said the brand of legal education taught at Yale is already so academic that many in the profession consider it impractical. “I’ve been to five law schools in my time, and, of course, graduates of Yale dominate the legal academy,” Berring said. “But whenever someone from Yale comes up in conversation, someone always makes the joke, ‘But they didn’t go to law school, they went to Yale.’”

“Sanguosha is very popular in China because it’s related to its cultural heritage,” UC Berkeley law professor Robert Berring, the faculty sponsor of the course, said…. “China has such a rich and special history. If you don’t understand that, you cannot possibly understand China,” he said.

UC Berkeley takes novel approach to card gameRobert Berring quoted in China Daily USA, August 3, 2012“Sanguosha is very popular in China because it’s related to its cultural heritage,” UC Berkeley law professor Robert Berring, the faculty sponsor of the course, said…. “China has such a rich and special history. If you don’t understand that, you cannot possibly understand China,” he said.

There are students at every school in the country who had top scores on [the LSAT] and they’re highly polished applicants — but they bomb,” she said. “Every law firm will tell you that: that they’re not good at lawyering, that they can’t get along with people, that they can’t manage stress.”

Robert Berring, a professor at UC Berkeley’s law school, compared the proposal to an essay published by a pair of law professors after World War II. The essay, which called for several changes to legal education, was highly controversial at the time. “But none of that ever got taken up, and that will probably happen with this too,” he said.

In the 1980s many law students had never used a computer. As the databases took over, the class morphed. LEXIS and WESTLAW became the standard source of research for the students. Personal computers became ubiquitous. Laptops and smart phones soon followed. The Internet pushed us further. Now Google and Wikipedia rule the land.

“There’s been a profound shift in how people consume information,” said Robert Berring, a law professor who specializes in the publishing industry at the Berkeley School of Law. “My undergrads don’t read in paper form anymore. (If I assign a book) they ask if they can get it on Kindle. . . . It’s going to kill libraries.”

Bob Berring, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor and book collector, said small bookbinderies serve an important role, making high-quality bindings for $100 to $200, compared with upscale book artists, who charge up to $5,000 a book.

Berring said the committee is looking for someone with a line of respected work and experience in the journalism industry. “You want a visionary that can come and make sure that the journalism school at Berkeley, which has been a leader in the field, stays a leader in the field,” Berring said. “Someone who … can help raise money to make that a reality.”

“It is seldom done,” Berring admitted about the use of a search firm. “We wanted to be sure we were finding the best person we could. The committee has been asked to submit three names to the vice chancellor of the university.”

In online searches, the researcher tends to follow hyperlink to hyperlink, in a journey that resembles “a plunge down a rabbit hole,” in the words of Robert Berring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has studied the impact of electronic media. “If you get to an index, a table of contents, you see the environment that surrounds it. In the culture of paper, a lot of these signals are important.”

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